Friday, July 20, 2007

Harry Potter And The Sputtering Hype Machine

Over the past couple of weeks, numerous torrents have surfaced online claiming to be the 7th and last Harry Potter book. They are all fakes. Can you really be surprised? This one, on the other hand, is the real thing. Someone has managed to get their hands on the American edition of the book and has photographed each page of and uploaded it to BitTorrent.

Riiiiiiiiiiight.

Look, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't... but will reading it stop anyone from buying it this weekend? Hell, reading it will probably boost sales... how else will you know if you really got the scoop... or just some really convincing fanfic?

Real or not, it's an impressive amount of initiative and moxy... be it on the part of crazed fans or cooly reasoning publicists.

The other thing that's amazing about this is that the main complaint that’s coming up in comment threads on these content-sharing sites is that the quality isn’t great. Not that it's posted... but that it's hard to read. You can just barely manage to read each page. And as some downloaders promptly noted, a few pages can't be read at all without editing the images in Photoshop.

Now, in the interest of saving your eyesight -or sanity- here's a rundown of the major plot points. Yes, (if you buy that this is the real deal) when you click the link, you'll learn who lives, who dies and who muggles a Voldemort... or something. So, if you want to remain unspoilt, for the love of Hermione, don't click here!

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